Some stakeholders in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Bayelsa state are yet to come to terms with the loss of the party at the November 16 governorship election in the state.
The PDP Elders Forum has criticized the alleged role of President Goodluck Jonathan in the election and called for the party to take disciplinary action against the former president.
In a statement in Yenagoa, the state capital, the forum’s Chairman Chief Benson Odoko said the action of the former President indicated that he supported the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the election.
He added that Jonathan, who visited President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa in Abuja before the election, kept his distance from the PDP throughout the campaigns.
Odoko recalled that the ex-President also refused to congratulate the PDP candidate, Senator Douye Diri, who was Commissioner for Sports when Jonathan was governor.
He also accused Jonathan and his wife of donating the Aridolf Hotel to the APC as the operational contact point for visiting dignitaries of the party and as the venue for the party’s primary.
The forum’s chairman said what was even more stupefying was the visit to President Jonathan by APC leaders shortly after the election and another visit by the leader of the APC in the state, Timipre Sylva, the candidate of APC in the election, Lyon, and others to the Jonathans.
He said the argument that Jonathan worked against the PDP because his preferred candidate, Timi Alaibe, lost in the primary was a pathetic perfidy meant to cover up the real reasons for this betrayal against Bayelsans and Nigerians.
